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Story to analyze
H. Munro
Mrs. Packletide’s Tiger
It was Mrs. Packletide’s pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. Not that the desire to kill had suddenly come to her. The compelling motive for the intention was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an airplane and talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger skin and a heavy harvest of press photographs could successfully counter that sort of thing. Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give in her house in Curzon Street, in Loona Bimberton’s honour, with a tiger skin occupying most of the foreground and all the conversation.Circumstances proved favourable. Mrs. Packletide had offered a thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger, and it so happened that an old tiger was in the habit of coming to a neigh¬bouring village at night. He was so old that he had to abandon game-killing and confine his appetite to the smaller domestic ani¬mals. The prospect of getting the thousand rupees stimulated the commercial instincts of the villagers; children were posted night and day in the jungle to watch the tiger, and the cheaper kind of goats were left about to keep him satisfied with his present quar¬ters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the day of Mrs. Packletide’s shoot.
The great night arrived. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable big tree, and on it sat Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, with a loud bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be expected to hear on a still night, was tied down at a correct distance.
“I suppose we are in some danger?” said Miss Mebbin.
She was not really afraid of the wild beast, but she did not wish to perform an atom more service than she had been paid for.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Packletide, “it’s a very old tiger. It couldn’t spring up here even if he wanted to.”
“If it is an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper. A thousand rupees is a lot of money.”
Their conversation was cut short by the appearance of the animal itself.
As soon as it saw the goat it lay flat on the earth for the purpose of taking a short rest before beginning the attack.
“I believe it is ill,” said Louisa Mebbin, loudly.
“Hush!” said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger began moving towards the goat.
“Now, now!” urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement, “if he doesn’t touch the goat we needn’t pay for it.”
The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great yellow beast rolled over in the stillness of death. In a moment a crowd of excited villagers appeared on the scene, and their triumph found a ready echo in the heart of Mrs. Packletide; already that lunch in Gurzon Street seemed much nearer.
It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat was dying from a bullet wound; while no trace of the rifle’s work could be found on the tiger. Evidently the wrong animal had been hit, and the tiger had died of heart failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle. Mrs. Packletide did not like the discovery, but the villagers gladly supported the fiction that she had shot the beast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore, Mrs. Packletide faced the cameras with a light heart, and her picture appeared on the pages of all papers in England and America. As for Loona Bimberton, she refused to look at a paper for weeks. The lunch-party she declined.
The tiger skin was inspected and admired, and Mrs. Packletide went to a costume ball in the character of Diana .
“How amused everyone would be if they knew what really happened, said Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball.
“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.
“How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death,” said Miss Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.
“No one would believe it,” said Mrs. Packletide, her face chan¬ging colour.
“Loona Bimberton would,” said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide’s face settled on an ugly shade of greenish white.
“You surely wouldn’t give away?” she asked.
“I’ve seen a week-end cottage near Dorking that I should like to buy," said Miss Mebbin. “Six hundred and eighty. Quite cheap, only I don’t happen to have the money.”
Louisa Mebbin’s pretty week-end cottage is the wonder and admiration of her friends.
Mrs. Packletide does no more shooting.
“The incidental expenses are so heavy,” she says to inquiring friends.
